Fading glory of hartal

So the past week went waste on account of hartal, complain many. But ask the tiny tots who did not have to attend schools, the answer may a different one. Even many of the Junior School Certificate (JSC) examinees might have relished the respite for sometime, come what may next. Maybe, their parents, worried as they are all the time about the future of their wards, did indeed differ with them. After all, they have other calculations related to such schedules. If such schedules do get disrupted, they do not take it in good grace.
Businessmen and transport operators, who are the prime sufferers when hartals are enforced, have no reason to like such programmes. Many therefore suggest that either hartals should be banned or an alternative to this programme be found. But what that alternative programme would be, no one can suggest. The truth is that a hartal is a hartal and as long as political parties are there, irrespective of their colour and conviction, they would not lose confidence in it.
The Bangalees on either side of the Indo-Bangla border today are a queer set of people who excel in high sounding in an empty vessel. When most other human species have accepted that there is virtue in more work and less talk and agitation, this particular specimen easily excitable and prone to talking may have beaten all others hands down. How? If still unconvinced, just follow the helping hand at any house in the capital. They go talking non-stop for hours or with breaks to the irritation of the employers.
And who does not know that all who call hartals love to brag about the success of their programmes. They too love talking randomly. But hartals recently have turned into their prototype of a different kind. Last week there were traffic jams at several points during hartals. You know the preference of people given the choice of course. But tailback on a hartal day, is not it too much? By all accounts, hartal has become just a ritual and people have started learning to ignore it. If things continue in the same train, who knows this mode of protest will make itself redundant or obsolete.
This will definitely be a loss. The zeal and the passion with which once pickets tried to impress upon the common people of the merit of the issues in questions have long taken leave of the country. Then came a period when police excesses and violence marked hartals. But what happened at certain point has no parallel in the country's history. So the programme has lost its appeal to the people. If it continues to do so, it will end up disgracing itself. People will not be required to contemplate about an alternative.
The main focus is on the capital and other cities during a hartal. So far as movement of people is concerned, it is restricted by inadequate transports. But that is proving so lately. Now where people really fail to get their way is in case of long distance journey. At least a section of businesspeople have found way to skirt around the peak hartal hour. But not all are equally lucky. Some complain that they are still reeling from the impact of the earlier hartals. Now that they are recovering from their losses, the fresh spate of hartals is proving too much for them.
Outmanoeuvring political programmes like hartals may not always be successful. So what is the way out? One suggestion came from a sympathetic quarter is that businesses incurring losses on account of hartal could be insured. How about that? Not a bad idea, specially when the business community is very ingenious in advancing their causes, no matter if on unsubstantiated grounds.